Inventing Interactive » future vision

Productivity Future Vision

David — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 17:55:14 +0000

Microsoft recently released a future vision video — looking at how people might get things done 5-10 years in the future. It’s a quite beautifully done piece, full of detail and scenarios. They’ve also put up a website which describes elements of the video in more detail.

But what’s surprising is the intensity of the reaction to this vision. It’s getting a lot of abuse.

From John Gruber (who further defends this comment in an additional post)

This video encapsulates everything wrong with Microsoft. Their coolest products are imaginary futuristic bullshit. Guess what, we’ve all seen Minority Report already. Imagine if they instead spent the effort that went into this movie on making something, you know, real, that you could actually go out and buy and use today.

Opinionated Type has a funny, and pretty smart, summary of the pieces design details and flaws. Including things like “There is no difference between a tap that selects, records, enters a chat, or backtracks. And no one is confused about this.” and “Mommy doesn’t wear her wedding ring on business trips.”

Fast Company describes the film as lacking authenticity — it’s too clean, and the people feel “dead behind the eyes”

“Microsoft’s film is probably going viral as we speak, but imagine how much more reach it would have if it dared to depict a guy stuck in a meeting that sucked, or using his smartphone in an airport that was full of noisy assholes and long lines, or searching his touchscreen-enabled smart refrigerator for a quick meal because his kids are bouncing off the walls and he’s bone-tired from a long day at work?”

But Joey deVilla supports the piece — and vision projects in general. He argues

“Without visions like concept videos to guide them, especially with the lack of someone in the visionary role, they may remain stuck on their current course: doing well but effectively coasting, content to make incremental improvements to already successful products or playing catch-up as with Internet Explorer, phones and tablets in efforts that are in danger of being too little, too late.”

I’m a big fan of vision films — not only can they set a target, but they let people envision ways to integrate developing technologies and concepts in ways which may not be possible today. (And I’ve worked on plenty myself.) But the Microsoft vision should be better — even if this film’s target is a general, not internal, audience. Microsoft doing lots of innovative work on interaction, interface, and content design. Why don’t we see something which really rethinks what’s possible? Something radical — that will change how people perceive Microsoft. Something with some beauty and joy.

On the other hand — at least it’s not as depressing as RIM’s future vision.

Dreamy Visions

David — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 18:23:20 +0000

Aeon

Here are three interesting vision scenario projects from Michaël Harbourn, a designer currently studying in Paris. There’s a fascinating aspect to these projects — I’m not sure if the student, foreign (non-US), or product-design orientation is the source. But his use of morphable surfaces, and quiet, almost meditative, presentation style, is pretty neat.

Aeon is a transportation vision, with augmented reality and even the ability to block everything out and just relax. And Transcendenz, part of his thesis project, is a means for users to block out the information assault of the regular world, and access the world of “Interconsciousness.” Interestingly, both projects lean towards blocking-out the surrounding world.

Living Kitchen shows a kitchen based on morphable surfaces. Users (chefs?) can draw on the surfaces to direct transformations, or gesture to make broader changes. The specifics feel a bit too organic, but I love the way the kitchen adapts to your needs. And the full sequence — washing the food, preparing it, and then serving it, all through transformations — is a nice example of a single interface for a broad range of functions.

Transcendenz

Living Kitchen

It’s probably silly to make a connection between Living Kitchen and Demon Seed. But still… why not?!

Oblong Mezzanine

David — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:18:04 +0000

It feels like this should be filed under future, or perhaps under alternate realities, but instead it’s the present – right now and available today… Oblong’s Mezzanine.

For years Oblong has been a fascinating company– doing super-innovative research into gestural interfaces. From their movie UI work, to conceptual demos, and even their vaguely mysterious (perhaps secret?) custom solutions — thir g-speak framework has been the foundation for a whole new category of interactions.

So it’s fantastic to see they’ve actually launched a product based on all this. Mezzanine is a “collaboration, whiteboarding, and presentation system whose triptych of high-definition displays forms a shared workspace.”

Their demo video shows just how broad a system Mezzanine is, and what a wide range of use-cases it can handle. Users all have access to a single shared workspace; and can display documents, access remote apps, even connect to the system from just about any mobile device.

To make the system more affordable they’re no longer using data gloves and cameras to recognize user gestures — instead they’ve got a special wand that lets users manipulate what’s on the displays. Based on how you rotate it, the wand gives access to three core functionalities: to manipulate assets in the workspace, to reach through to drive connected laptops, and snapshot to create new assets. A fairly simple set of basics that gives access to a lot of possibilities.

In an interesting article/review of the system in TechCrunch, John Underkoffler, Oblong’s chief scientist, describes one of Mezzanine’s intents: “We’re building the UI to emit a virtuosic performance.” A beautiful idea, and one that will hopefully lead to a revolution in how we think about meetings.

Medley AR

David — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 18:18:52 +0000

Revealing a display under a watch

Here’s a charming Augmented Reality vision piece, “Medley,” created by Mattias Wozniak and Björn Svensson as part of their Masters Thesis at Lund University in Sweden. It’s full of great, beautifully delicate, examples how AR could be incorporated into everyday life. A nice contrast to some of the alternative nightmarish advertising or boring corporate scenarios.

Medley is based around the notion of “augmented reality visor seamlessly integrated into your world.” With this visor as a base, Mattias and Björn present scenarios entitled play, share, create, and guide. And there some nice details. For example, playing with an AR ball at the bus stop, the system keeps an ongoing score of the game. And the subtlety of hiding a panel of content under your watch strap, and then sliding it out to see a message, is a great way to associate data with physical objects — much nicer than than having everything appear on some sort of giant augmented reality computer screen.

Simple, beautiful and human. Very cool.

Update: Björn sent me links to two PDF files (on Dropbox) that are definitely worth a look for further information. The first is the full Thesis report, and te second is a shorter summary Article. Thanks!

Playing with an AR ball at the bus stop

Leaving a digital artifact behind for a friend to discover

Friend locator, wayfinding, and location-based content

Original storyboard for the 'Waiting for the Bus' scenario

(Link via Games Alfresco.)

Quick Post: Corning’s A Day Made of Glass

David — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 23:15:44 +0000

I’m normally a sucker for future vision videos, but Corning’s A Day Made of Glass, left me cold. It’s pretty, and full of subtle scenario details, but overall the interactions shown are so ordinary that it’s hard to get very excited. Maybe that’s just their point — this technology is becoming a standard part of our lives. But it would still be nice to see things pushed a bit further.

Space Fence

David — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 19:02:46 +0000

Space Fence is a $60-million future US space surveillance network — claimed to be able to detect objects as small as 10 cm (four inches) at heights up to 30,000 km (15,000 nautical miles). One of the key contractors, Lockeed Martin, recently posted a video (also on their How website) showing a vision of how the program will revamp the way the U.S. Air Force identifies and tracks objects in space.

The film is a neat combination of future scenarios and flashy info-graphics. It’s hard to tell how real the software or interfaces are, but it’s fun to think that people in the Air Force are on the edge of their seats making sure satellites don’t bump into each other using a system as gentle sounding as a “fence.” I’d imagine that the reality is probably a little more slow-moving and military.

(Link via Infosthetics.)

StarFire

David — Tue, 11 Jan 2011 04:45:03 +0000

That is a big desk!

Last week Microsoft demoed Surface 2, the new version of their Surface table. It has some pretty cool features, particularly a technology they call PixelSense, which lets the table visually recognize and scan almost any object placed on it without using cameras. Interactive Things pointed out the similarity to Starfire — a fascinating project I’d never heard of before.

StarFire was a future vision film, done in 1992 by Bruce Tognazzini at Sun. It shows some pretty cutting-edge (at the time) technology and UI ideas — when the web was still in its infancy. (As a point of reference, the film was done six years after Apple’s Knowledge Navigator film.) Included were: a curved immersive workstation, “cyberspace searching” (a precursor to the web), texture mapping of information from a 2-D video onto a 3-D mannequin, telepresence, and wireless networking. (For details on the deep thinking behind the project, Bruce has a good write up.)

As film-making, it’s strange and dated — a workplace scenario that reads like a soap-opera. The height of weirdness is when we voyeuristically watch a marriage propose taking place in another office. (You can see how big the production was in this making of video.) Crazy but fun.

Video conferencing / Telepresence.

Scanning text placed on the desk.

Video conferencing work session at desk.

Watching co-workers.

Dual chording keyboards

Search results.

Texture mapping a 3-D mannequin.

Nanotechnology & Nokia Morph

David — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 17:32:01 +0000

Here’s some super-interesting work from the Nokia Research Center showing five future mobile interface ideas. The introduction film is a charming animated scenario called Morph. It demonstrates some possibilities nanotechnologies might enable in future communication devices. But it’s not just dreaming, there’s some pretty hard-core science going on behind the scenes.

Much of the vision is based on nanotechnologies and research done with the Cambridge Nanoscience Centre. The applications are pretty cool. They include stretchable surfaces (via a nanoscale mesh of fibers), devices that can smell (via nanowire sensing), the ability to harvest solar energy (via nanoscale grass), self-cleaning devices (via superhydrophobic surfaces), transparent electronics (because the technology can be so small), and haptic surfaces (via electrovibration) with true 3d buttons.

(Visit Wired to see the full article. Link via Putting People First.)

Media Surfaces

David — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 21:46:42 +0000

Check it out, two new films from BERG — what a great way to start the day. They’re sketches exploring ideas and principles behind Dentsu London‘s communications strategy Making Future Magic. The films don’t feature a lot of interactivity, they’re more about communication and information design. But they are quite beautiful, and calm, visions of how technology can be woven into our lives.

Russell Davies points out that the films are “a great expression and an important one — because if we apply media’s usual instincts to all the screens that are going to arrive in our world we’ll be drowned by the shouting. We have to learn to be polite.” And I agree – they’re a far cry from the chaos shown in Keiichi Matsuda’s Augmented City.

I’m including the films here, but be sure to read the two posts on BERG’s blog, Incidental Media and The Journey, and which go into much more detail on the ideas in the films.

Listening to the radio, this device shows related images.

Useful information from a machine that knows where it is.

The Future of Screens, 2014

David — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 07:12:23 +0000

Swedish firm TAT (The Astonishing Tribe) has created a future vision of screen technology. Set in 2014, it shows some interesting technologies and use-cases — featuring stretchable surfaces and transparent displays.

What’s super-cool is that the film is the result of an open innovation experiment. TAT asked people for input on what sort of inspirational video they should make, and for suggestions on the features and capabilities to show. Screen Technology was the winner, and you can see the discussion around the topic that helped generate the ideas for the film.

Link via Gizmodo.

Interaction with a double-sided display.

Stretchable display.

Sharing between devices.